


light as a feather

by hotmesslewis



Category: Historical RPF, Lewis and Clark
Genre: Bondage, Feathers & Featherplay, General Dirtiness, M/M, Rope Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 13:36:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13591167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hotmesslewis/pseuds/hotmesslewis
Summary: It's payback time!!!  (Worst.  Summary.  Ever.)





	light as a feather

**Author's Note:**

> lmao if you know me and know the circumstances under which this was written you can absolutely tell which parts were written for me and which parts were written to impress a girl

Meriwether Lewis stood in the door of the room he, William Clark, and the Charbonneaus shared at Fort Mandan and watched Peter Cruzatte as his fingers fiddled with the tuning pegs of his violin in discontentment.  Finally Cruzatte gave up his futile attempts to tune the instrument, much abused by travel and the air of the river, and brought it to nestle beneath his chin, fingers falling comfortably along the neck as he raised the bow.  A spritely reel seemed to blossom in the union between man and fiddle—the rest of the wintering Corps of Discovery, gathered around the fire pit in the middle of the fort, began to abandon the buffalo they feasted upon as they let themselves get caught in the music of Cruzatte, and Lewis smiled at his men.  It would not be long before the food would be forgotten entirely as the men would begin to dance and dream of home.  Let them celebrate tonight; the hunting party that returned with the previous day’s kill had been uncommonly successful.  Lewis turned his back on the Corps and went back into the darkness of their rooms, not lit by the fire, moon and stars.

William Clark sat in the light of a lamp, his red hair flaming in the yellow glow, and labored over the day’s entry in his journal, chewing lightly on the tongue he perpetually kept between his teeth when he struggled to determine the best way to spell a word.  Lewis’s smile both softened and deepened as he gazed at his co-captain and good friend, thinking warmly about how that tongue felt in his mouth.  With a light sigh he closed the door behind him and crossed over to his travel-sized field desk, resolved to find something with which to occupy his hands.  Already Lewis felt himself sinking in the knowledge that this was going to another long, lonely winter evening at Fort Mandan.

Clark looked up at the commotion Lewis was making at the desk, sliding open drawers, pulling out compartments, staring at them in dismay for a moment, then slamming them shut again.  Eventually Lewis sat down in the chair before the desk and opened a drawer he had already looked in once before, pulling out his elegant flintlock pistol and preparing to give it a thorough cleaning and polishing.  Clark felt his temperature suddenly rise at the appearance of the gun, vividly remembering the last time he had seen Lewis clean it: one stormy fall morning when he kneeled, ropes binding him in silence on the floor, sweating and dying to be touched by the man who let his fingers run with such grace and tenderness over the barrel of a gun.  Clark set aside his journal to watch Lewis clean the gun yet again, swallowing hard as Lewis’s hand moved up and down the flintlock in steady pace.  It was a mesmerizing sight.  Finally Clark spoke.

“Meriwether Lewis, are you trying to seduce me?”

Lewis started from the task he was intent upon, blue eyes dark in the dim light of the lamps as he looked up from his chore and into the hungry eyes of William Clark, who still couldn’t tear his gaze from the gun in Lewis’s hand.  Glancing back down at the gun, Lewis felt the heat spreading up his neck, but he smirked.  The good sense of a soldier was all that kept him from indulging in his sudden desire to run his tongue up the flintlock simply for the pleasure of seeing Clark shiver.

“Always, Billy Clark.”

Clark smiled to himself as he commented, “If only that were true.”  But Lewis had already dropped the gun back into its drawer, the cleaning only half done, and was across the room, grabbing Clark by the shoulders, pulling him to his feet to press him to the wall in a deep kiss.  Clark offered no objection, wrapping his arms tightly around the younger man, letting his fingers slide below Lewis’s waistband in the back.

But suddenly his hands were gone again as Clark pulled back his head with a nervous glance toward the door.  Lewis sighed in frustration, planting his arms on the wall on either side of Clark’s head, nuzzling his face against Clark’s neck and relishing the feel of the vibrations originating from the neck as Clark spoke.

“We can’t, Meri.  Someone could come in at any moment.”

Now it was Lewis who pulled back from the other man, looking at him in mild disbelief.  But Clark’s cagey eyes were still fixed on the door.  Was Clark truly going to let the possibility of discovery stop his passion?

Meriwether Lewis would not stand for it.

He pushed himself back from the wall and surveyed their room quickly, his eye lighting on one of the heavy trunks full of specimens and papers belonging to Clark and himself against the wall opposite the door.  He pulled it out from its tight corner, then got behind it and pushed it across the floorboards and against the door.  The trunk was quite heavy, weighing at least a hundred pounds—though it wouldn’t stop someone entirely from opening the door and intruding on Lewis and Clark, it would at least make their work significantly more difficult and slow them.  “Problem solved,” Lewis remarked, brushing his hands off. 

Clark had his shirt half off when Lewis turned to face him again, and Lewis had to hold back his laughter.  “Billy, stop.”  They came together in a kiss for a moment and Lewis’s voice was low and thirsty.  “Let me.”

Clark nearly gave in to him as Lewis teased the buttons of his front flap with one hand and let the other slip down inside Clark’s pants, willing to let go and let Lewis take control, as he normally did, but for once he stopped himself.  For once, he was resolved; Clark would be the one who would lead the play, who would set the pace.

“I don’t think so, Meri.”  He pulled his shirt completely off and slid out of the breeches that Lewis had already unbuttoned.

“Excuse me?”  Lewis wasn’t sure rather to be appalled or intrigued by this sudden desire for dominance Clark was displaying, but he knew at the very least he was amused.

“I said, no.  Tonight I want to,” Clark paused for a moment, looking for the right words.  Why did words that sprang so easily to the lips and pen of Meriwether Lewis always seem to evade him?  Where had Lewis been given the gift of words?  He gathered some words and continued, “Tonight I want to lead in this dance of ours.”

Lewis, in spite of himself, was charmed.  “You know, you are very nearly being insubordinate, William Clark.”

“Am I?”  Clark mused as he pushed Lewis down onto the wooden trunk in front of the door while simultaneously pulling his knee to Lewis’s crotch and pulling off Lewis’s shirt.  “Oddly enough, I don’t care.  And I have a feeling that you won’t mind, either, Meriwether Lewis.”  He said the man’s name into his lips as Lewis tried to slither out of his own leather stockings around Clark’s knee.  They sat for a few minutes longer, Clark pressing Lewis to the door as Lewis explored Clark’s mouth with his tongue, before both men slipped to the floor and broke apart to catch their breath.

Clark’s heavy eyes, dark with lust and mischief, lit on the trunk they had been sitting on.  He pressed his body tightly to Lewis, grinding against him gently, as he threw back the lid of the trunk and foraged around inside it.  With Clark’s chest so close and Clark smelling so good, Lewis couldn’t resist the impulse, dipping his head and letting his tongue trace the outside of Clark’s belly button before drawing his tongue up the rest of Clark’s torso.  Clark had to close his eyes and bite his lip, pausing for the moment before returning to his task and pulling three things out of the wooden box—a pile of ropes, a length of satin that Lewis used for a cravat when in his dress uniform, and a jar of bear oil.

Lewis’s hand reached instantly for the cord, which he fondled almost lovingly.  “Ropes?” he asked with a dark smile and clever eyes.

“I never did return the favor,” Clark pointed out with a wicked grin.  But his eyes were soft, concerned, asking the unspoken question: did Meriwether Lewis trust him that much?

Lewis saw the question, and, sliding between Clark’s spread legs, gave his answer in his casual comment.  “I’ve never been tied up before.”

Yes.

Yes, he did trust Billy Clark that much. 

But only Billy Clark.

“Neither had I, until you came along,” Clark admitted, ignoring the rope himself in favor of the length of white fabric, which he picked up and held to Lewis’s face, wrapping it around his eyes one, two, three, four times before knotting the fabric in the back.

“What’s this?”  Lewis wasn’t sure if his laugh bubbled up from his anticipation or his small anxiety.  “A blindfold?  Am I to stand before a firing squad, Billy?”

“Of sorts.”  Lewis could no longer see the bright smile he knew was on Clark’s handsome face, but he could hear the thoughtful laughter in his voice.  “Now stretch out your arms.”

Lewis did so, holding his arms up to the ceiling, wrists together, waiting to be bound.

“No, not like that.”  Clark picked himself up off of Lewis and the floor, standing as he pushed Lewis’s back to the ground with his foot.  “Lay your arms across the ground, stretched out above your head.  And keep them apart.”  Lewis did as he was asked, and Clark took hold of one of his wrists and wrapped a piece of the rope around it, tying it tightly to the leather handle of the trunk, repeating with the other hand.  Already Lewis felt his back arching involuntarily, and he wanted the heat of Clark around him, in him.

“Now do the same with the legs.”  These Clark tied to the legs of the field desk, pausing only briefly to wonder if the thin legs of the desk would hold under the pull of Lewis’s strong legs in the moment of his heat.  He stood back and gazed at the bound, blindfolded man spread on the ground before him in pure pleasure.  His mouth was full of the taste of lust, and that taste was the taste of Meriwether Lewis, his hot, salty sweat and his seed.  He watched as Lewis tried the strength of the rope, pulling with his arms and legs, testing to see just how much his movement would be restricted.  Lewis said nothing, but his lips moved in what could have been either a silent curse or a silent prayer as he hardened in spite of himself.

“Oh, yes.” Clark positively purred.  “I can see why you like this, Meriwether.”

At the moment, what Clark wanted more than anything was to press his body to Lewis’s and hold them together until they both screamed out in pleasure.  But that would be much too easy, too gratifying—since he had Lewis in his power, he would make Lewis _pay_ for all of the teases, for all of the times Lewis led him up to the moment of climax only to pull away suddenly, for the ropes and the flintlock.

The ropes and the flintlock.

Oh, they were wonderful. 

Unbelievable.

But Meriwether Lewis needed to pay for them.

Clark glanced around the room, trying to temper his own stampeding desire, looking for some sort of inspiration.  His hazel eye fell upon a gift from one of the native tribes they had exchanged favors with—Clark could never recall which one, and likely would have pronounced the name wrong even if he could have—an object that undoubtedly held some cultural or spiritual significance to the Indians but seemed merely a curiosity to the white men, something that the president might like to add to his collection.  Feathers dangled from the end of the smoothly tanned animal skin stretched tight across a frame made of bone, and in these feathers Clark found inspiration that he felt might be equal to the most devious ideas of Meriwether Lewis.  He stepped across Lewis’s sweating, immobile body to pluck one of the feathers from its spot on the decoration.

Lewis felt Clark moving away from him and called out the name uncertainly.  “Billy?”

“Never fear, Meriwether.”  The movement of Clark’s return, and suddenly the voice was right next to his head and Lewis was expecting to be kissed.  “I’m still here.”

But Clark didn’t kiss Lewis, or touch him at all.  Instead he gripped the end of the feather tightly between his fingers and brushed the soft tip across Lewis’s forehead.  Lewis shivered with the unexpected and gloriously light touch.  Clark traced the feather back across Lewis’s temple and then down his nose and across his lips and chin.

Lewis gasped for air.  “What is that?”

The intensity of Lewis’s reaction was like lightning.  Clark watched in pure wonder, his voice soft.  “A feather.”  He traced the tip around Lewis’s thin but shapely lips, before holding it with unfathomable lightness across the part of Lewis’s mouth.  Lewis bit at it, but Clark’s reflexes were faster.

“A feather,” Lewis repeated in burning disbelief.  “Good Lord.”

Clark watched Lewis’s Adam’s apple bob repeatedly as the man swallowed and repeated his words of piety.  “You know, your hair has always reminded me of feathers,” Clark mentioned quietly.  “Dark but light and so soft, with that little cowlick in back that will just never lay flat.  How does it feel?”

Lewis had only one word for it.  “Incredible.”

Clark smiled broadly as he rolled the feather across Lewis’s curving neck and across the top of his chest, tracing the line of the collarbone that seemed beautifully delicate under the tight stretch of the skin.  The feather danced up the inside of Lewis’s arms, lingering in the sensitive crook for a moment, following the river of veins in Lewis’s forearms before marking the lines across Lewis’s palm, and Lewis was practically shaking in his unbridled lust, usually kept so well tempered by his rationality and his cognizance.  Clark repeated the motion on the other arm, working down from the palm to the shoulder, then letting the feather drag down the center of Lewis’s chest and stomach until it reached the dark thatch of hair just below the crest of Lewis’s hips.

For a moment Clark was worried that his tease might be getting to him more than it was the silent, prone, seemingly unresponsive man under the feather, but then he outlined Lewis’s nipples with the soft end and the man let loose a string of the most unholy words, and Clark knew that, perhaps for just this once, Lewis was being properly tormented by his desire.

Good Lord.

A feather.

How could this man know just where to place it, Lewis wondered with madness as the feather ran across his hipbone and to the inside of his leg, tickling the inner part of one of his thighs and causing his erection to stiffen even more.  How could he possibly find such sensitivity and stimulation in places where it shouldn’t exist, the kneecap, the top ridge of the shin, the inside of an ankle?  As Clark let the feather dust up the other leg, Lewis indulged himself in a moment in which he forgot to think entirely.

So much pain in his hot anticipation.

It was exquisite.

Until Clark brushed the feather on the head of Lewis’s cock before pulling it along the throbbing underside, and suddenly it all became too much.

 A ragged cry as the memory hit him, and Meriwether Lewis needed salvation.

It was a strange thing for him to recall at that moment, he considered as he seemed to go outside of himself in the memory.

Three days out on the expedition, and Meriwether Lewis had stood at the top of a bluff made of earth overlooking the rushing river beneath him, his stalwart dog at his side.  This fresh air, this bright sun, this dancing water, this sense of incredible purpose, and at that moment Lewis felt full.  He had stepped out further on the ledge, right to the very lip overhanging the water, wanting to lose himself in the sight before him, when he felt the dirt give way beneath his feet.

And he was falling.

All that awaited him was the hard impact of the water and the certainty of death.

God, he was falling, even now, here under the flick of Clark’s feather he was falling and he knew that he couldn’t possibly live through this.  He was dropping, plummeting, crashing to his death, and only one thing could save him but it was something he couldn’t possibly do himself and it was something he couldn’t possibly ask for.

Oh, God, to die like this.

The fear of not being saved was immense, consuming.

Meriwether Lewis asked for it anyway, screaming the words out.

“Christ in heaven, Billy!  Touch me!”

And Clark did.

Sweet salvation. 

Life.

Like a knife plunged into a fissure on the face of the bluff, an instinct catching at just the right moment and allowing Meriwether Lewis to live, and to be grateful for his life.

Clark’s hand on his hot chest over his thundering heart as Clark leaned over him and kissed him deeply, holding him to the floor, or was he dangling from that knife over the hungry waters of the Missouri again?  Lewis couldn’t be sure.

Sometime after Clark’s lips left his he remembered to breath again.  “Thank you.”  He was ragged but sincere, and Clark’s eyes shone dark as he held himself panting over the bound man.  He was surprised that he was able to hold his suddenly heavy body off the floor with just one hand, but Clark did so as he lifted Lewis’s head and fumbled with the knot of the blindfold, unraveling the fabric from around Lewis’s face.

Those eyes.  Were they blue or gray or both or neither?  Clark never was entirely sure, but they were impossibly beautiful at the moment.  Because even in the dim light of their room at the fort they seemed to be, possibly for the first time that Clark could recall, without their perpetual shadow.  He leaned close to Lewis’s ear and forgot to be a gentleman, whispering the words.  “Meriwether Lewis, allow me to fuck you.”

Lewis hadn’t thought it was possible for him to get any harder but Clark’s uncensored request proved him wrong.  “Oh, Lord, please do, Billy.  For God’s sake, fuck me!”

Clark took Lewis’s mouth into his for the moment as he fumbled blindly with the lid of the container of animal grease gathered from the fat of the Corps’ slaughtered bears and buffalo.  He pulled away and sat up when his first two fingers were thick with the dripping oil and sat back, simply watching Lewis as Lewis watched his hand.  It moved across Lewis’s body in the air with an astonishing slowness, some of the grease dripping onto his leg as Clark lowered his hand between Lewis’s legs and opened Lewis, rubbing the bear oil into Lewis’s tightness.  His hips bucked, his back arched impossibly off the floor, and Lewis gasped out a single word.

“Oh, lover!”

Clark stopped for a moment, his fingers still inside Lewis, and simply gazed at the man on the floor.  Then his lips were on Lewis’s once again, sweeter, gentler than before, and his strong hands lifted Lewis’s back off of the floor, pulling on the ropes almost to the breaking point as he put his length inside of Lewis and wrapped his legs around Lewis’s sides.

The rhythm came naturally to them now, Clark deepening with each slide in and out of Lewis, and becoming deeply stirred by the way that Lewis’s hard cock pressed against his chest with each movement.  Lewis’s hands twisted desperately in their bonds as he searched for something to clutch before twisting upon themselves and taking hold of the rope that held him where he was.  His teeth tore into his lip until Clark suddenly grabbed Lewis’s cock with one hand, and his mouth parted with a profoundly satisfied moan.  Once, twice, thrice Clark ran his hand, still slick from the oil, down Lewis’s shaft in rhythm with his own thrusts, until Lewis came suddenly, unexpectedly spilling his seed across both of their chests.  Seeing Lewis’s climax, hearing his yell of exultation was all it took to finish Clark, who reached peak moments later as he felt Lewis trembling above him, beneath him, around him.

They untangled their legs and collapsed onto the floor, Clark too exhausted to even untie Lewis’s bonds for the moment, and stared up at the ceiling over their heads.  It was strange, having a ceiling above them to look at as they lay, trying to catch their breaths and trying to not fall asleep, and it was strange having a floor beneath them.  Usually they had at most the dark softness of a tent above them at most, but more often just the canopy of the trees and sky; they had always had the warmth of the ground on which to cool their hot bodies.  Something about the floorboards beneath them felt so impersonal.  Something about the ceiling seemed so oppressive.

Lewis needed to tell him.  He fought himself for the words.

“That was—”

Clark closed his eyes.  “Shh, Meri.”

“Really, Billy, I can’t tell you how much—”

Clark would have put his hand to Lewis’s mouth to silence him, but he didn’t have the strength to reach that far, instead letting his hand rest on Lewis’s chest, over the still thundering heart once again.  “Meriwether, please.  I know.  You don’t have to tell me.”  A pause, heavy with panting.  Clark repeated himself quietly.  “I know.”

A word hung between the two men, heavy, mysterious, dangerous like a fog over the river.

_Lover_.


End file.
